A Post-Modernist Approach of Humanism: A Philosophical Study

Unlike the ancient times, ‘human’ became the centre of all social and scientific discourse in the modern world. Man, with his inherent potentialities became capable of establishing comprehensive systems of knowledge. Again the individual man gets utmost concern in philosophy through the works of romanticism, especially during the existentialist movement led by the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. On 29th October 1945 Sartre delivered a public lecture entitled as is ‘Existentialism a Humanism’, which was soon to become World War, humanism became the manifesto to everyone’s life. But with the development of human sciences, there are many things that have been gradually either ignored or isolated. The paper presents ‘Man’ as a modern abstract construction, which is also an incomplete project and therefore it needs to be deconstructed and redefined. The paper also tries to demonstrate the argument of the anti-humanistic movement led by post-modernist thinkers. Another contradiction lies when we talk about ‘human rights’ and about the feminist movement. If human rights stands for the protection of all human being’s natural and legal rights then what is the need of feminist ideology as it is primarily associated with women empowerment.